No Man’s Sky, A Universe of Lies and Broken Promises

No Man’s Sky has been met with both praise and disappointment. As expected of a game caught in a marketing hype, fans expected No Man’s Sky to be the pinnacle space exploration experience, creating an image Hello Games could never fully deliver on.

“I don’t know if we can ever live up to the hype we’ve generated, sometimes knowingly, often not”, said the Creator of No Man’s Sky, Sean Murray in a letter to the Australian press.

The game’s overwhelming hype was a result of a mixture of factors, including no one getting hands on time with the game until its release and media copes being sent out at launch rather than prior to its release, as well as various interviews with Murray.

Some fans even felt that the British team lied about the game’s content, failing to include mechanics that were said to be in the game. Redditor Cymen90 listed everything that was missing from the game according to interviews with Hello Games’ founder and the creator of the game and Joe Danger, Sean Murray. The post concluded the ability to land on asteroids, crashed freighters on planets, joinable factions and ship classes ofering variation in traversal and combat, among various other concepts were oddly absent.

“You don’t just happen upon some large land creature having a drink whole in the water, maybe because rivers were scrapped…” said the Reddit user.

The internet wasn’t shy with comparing E3 gameplay demos with the playable version either, detailing brachiosaurus-like creatures towering over the player in a colourful world rich with life shown in the E3 2014 gameplay demo, with the bizarre combination of a T-Rex rhinoceros with pointed ears awkwardly climbing up a small mountain seen in the actual game.

Other members of the No Man’s Sky community believe the game has met the overwhelming expectations, seeing those questioning its content as entitled. What some argue is missing from the game, these fans believe is actually present and just hasn’t been discovered yet because of the quintillions of planets on offer.

The PC community has since taken to mods to help bring broken promises Sean Murray had previously made to life, with mods such as the Low Flight mod giving you the ability to fly as low as you want to the ground and underwater, and even look around your ship’s window instead of the tunnel-vision view intended by the developers. Many on the game’s subreddit arguing that the game’s worlds feel empty and lifeless have taken to installing the Big Things mod which increases the size of your surrounding natural environment to make planets feel more life-like and huge.

Despite concerns from some that Hello Games lied to consumers, Sean Murray and the small team are continuing support, frequently updating the game to fix framerate and crashing on PC. “We’re totally focused on customer support right now”, said Murray on Twitter. “Then we’ll move onto including and adding features to the game. If for one small moment I can make some feel that they have stepped through a science fiction book cover, or to think about the size of our universe…then I’ll be happy…”